The smell of the dog fox lingered over the garden. It smeared the damp leaves and the turned earth, mixing with scents of bark and rotting compost. Rich, hot, tangy, it was our companion through the short autumn days. The scent clung to the pear trees and the burst fruit at their base, the hawthorn branches covered in black spikes and the mushrooms that grew around the roots.
One day Jamie, my brother, had a bruise on his leg that was the same colour as those mushrooms. The yellow flesh matched the fungus that grew on the bark.
We were making fox masks for Halloween. Papier-mâché like lumpy porridge heaped over twin wire frames. Two fox masks for two twin brothers. They sat on the kitchen table and grew day by day, two severed heads shifting and bulging with the passing hours. First they grew triangular muzzles, proud and pointed. Then they had ears, eye slits, whiskers. Soon they sat finished on the table. Two fox masks painted the colour of dead leaves.
We looked out for the dog fox in the early mornings and the evenings but we never saw him. All we had was the smell and the bloody patches of feathers that he left sometimes beneath bushes and in the shadowy corners of the garden. The fox’s scent contained memories too, spirits of creatures he had killed. The ghosts moved easily through the air, and in the thin light you sensed them hanging in the mist of hot breath in the cold. You could see them, almost: outlined shapes of hen and shrew, pigeon, rat and weasel. Their unravelling forms swayed on the edges of the light.
The masks faced the window. They looked out at a small garden flattened by glass. Everything was heavy, full of moisture.
Through the eyes of a fox mask the world looks different. Divided into two puddles of vision. We looked out through fox eyes as we chased each other round the garden, following red lines of musk that criss-crossed the lawn. Two brothers, running. One of them with bruises on his legs.
We chased round and round. The smell of the dog fox was everywhere. Under the hedge and over flower bed, over the barbs and the brambles and the nettles.
We touched our pointed noses together and saw through our eye slits a mirror image looking back down a sharp muzzle.
Two flint eyes, looking back.
Michael Eades is a writer, researcher and curator based in London. His work explores ideas of place, memory, ritual and community. At the moment he is focused on two portfolios of work exploring the secret histories of Bloomsbury in North London (where he works) and various parts of South London (where he lives). Michael also runs the UK’s Being Human festival, an annual multi-city festival of innovative, research driven events. He can be found at @DrMichaelEades and www.michaeleades.net.
